In a traditional cellular deployment, suitable powered macro base stations are being deployed to cover sufficiently large areas to provide cellular coverage. However, with the deployment of macro base stations only, it generally suffers with quick capacity degradation with the increase in number of user equipment operating in the macro base stations coverage areas. As a result, cellular operators are placing one or more Wi-Fi access points and small cells at multiple strategic locations points along with the macro base stations deployment to serve large number of user equipment operating in that particular location/area. This kind of network is generally termed as heterogeneous network (referred hereinafter as HetNet). In the HetNet, the macro base station coverage could be used for wide area overlay mobility coverage, while small cells along with Wi-Fi access point's coverage could be used for mobile capacity upgrade
For the typical HetNet, strategic locations/areas for such Wi-Fi access points and small cellular cells generally include areas with high density of user equipments such as shopping malls, airports, railway/bus stations, colleges, etc. Further, these locations might include area with dead-spots or areas with macro base station having low signal strength such as indoor establishments or peripheral locations of the macro coverage area. Therefore, the usage of such HetNet provides better network coverage and provides the increased data capacity that enhance the overall user's mobile broadband experience.
As a part of HetNet deployment strategy, the cellular operators are increasingly complementing their macro cellular networks by installing clusters of standalone small cells, standalone access points, and WiFi integrated small cells. These clusters are being put at public/private sites (called as hotspot sites), within a macro coverage area, where the user density is relatively higher. Such HetNet deployment strategy helps the operators to offload load from the macro base station network, thereby allowing them to efficiently expand on the wireless capacity and coverage fronts in order to meet the increasing demand of mobile broadband from the consumers.
However, in order to achieve the maximum effectiveness from the deployment of the HetNet, the cellular operators need to know the capacity utilization of the macro base stations at the hotspot sites. This helps the cellular operators for planning to deploy optimum small cells/access points. Further, indicators are linked to the macro base station capacity utilization at the hotspot sites reveals the health of the small cells/access points installed at those sites. In an instance where enough number of the small cells/access points are installed at the hotspot site and the capacity utilization of the macro base station is still high, this could potentially mean that either the small cells/access points are not functional or the coverage is not planned meticulously for such site, or the offload function between the macro base station and the small cells/access points is not working seamlessly.
Currently, the cellular operators generally rely on aggregated capacity utilization of the small cells/access points to predict for further capacity expansion. The prediction of further small cells/access points expansion generally holds true when the aggregated capacity utilization of the small cells/access points starts hitting an upper threshold of the maximum available capacity available from the small cells/access points. However, such a prediction, based on aggregated capacity utilization of the small cell/access points does not provide any insight to the cellular operators as to how much additional small cell capacity needs to be provisioned for offload.
Further, the cellular operators have access to the small cells/access points related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the users that are offloaded from the macro base station. These KPIs only reveals the cellular operators whether the small cells/access points are optimally serving the offloaded users or not. However, cellular operators presently do not have any insight into whether their installed small cells/access points are efficiently executing the offload from the overlapping macro base stations or not.
Therefore, in view of above-mentioned drawbacks in the existing solutions, there is a need for an efficient and effective approach for determining capacity utilization of the macro base station where the small cells/access points are deployed to offload the macro base station.